Edward's bad day

**917 words***

Edward searched the crowd looking for his daughter, he knew he shouldn’t have brought the child with him to a strike. These union people are all thugs, he thought as he saw Bella standing a few feet away.

“Where did you get that” he asked as he saw his daughter staring at a Hello Kitty lunch box that he had never seen before.

“The man, he gived it to me” she said with a big smile.

“What man, where?”

“The man, he was eating his food and he gived it to me. He said I could have it daddy.”

Edward thought for a moment, I guess there’s no harm in that; maybe these people aren’t all bad after all.

“Ok, you can have it, but what have I told you about taking things from strangers?

“Don’t?” Bella looked at the ground with that sort of innocent look that always melted his heart.

“OK then, as long as you know and it doesn’t happen again.” Edward picked up the five year old girl, more mad at himself for losing site of her in this crowd. How could I have let that happen? A momentary feeling of guilt swept over him but quickly passed when one of the picketers threw a bag of garbage at a passing car.

He’d better get busy, he thought. He put Bella in the car and told her to stay put and not to unlock the doors until he got back. How, he wondered, had his wife convinced him to take a child to a mob scene like this when she knew full well that he’d be unable to do his job and take pictures for the paper unless he locked the girl in the car. She clearly didn’t understand his job, or maybe she just didn’t care.

It hadn’t always been like this, the fighting, the sniping. No, at one time they had actually loved each other...but that seemed like a million years ago. Now, all she could do was criticize and try to undermine him at every turn. Some day she would be sorry, he knew it. Today though she was using their only child as a weapon, a weapon designed to get in the way of his work. A way to lose him his job, then, he knew, she would file for divorce...but only after she had laid the foundation of his destruction.

Well not today, he thought as he snapped shot after shot of strikers losing control. Animals, nothing more than animals.

Most of the town was on the side of the strikers. These were after all people that they knew, people that they went to church with. People that they saw every week at soccer and at bingo. But Edward knew better. Sure most unions were just normal people who were trying to better their lives, but not this bunch. This bunch was dangerous. They had been radicalized, they were bomb throwers and subversives.

How anyone could trust this group was beyond him, he was just about to get a shot of one of the radicals breaking the windows of a parked car as he heard “Daddy, can we go now?”

He looked down to see his daughter standing by his side, she hadn’t stayed in the car. The rage welled up inside of him’ he fought to not snap at the girl. She must have been frightened by the ruffians in the crowd. It’s not her fault, he told himself as he put the camera back in it’s bag and picked the girl up.

As he turned to return to the car a wave of heat and a violent blast of sound removed him from his feet. He lost his grip on Bella as he fell to the ground. Edward’s world spun as he saw the bodies flying in all directions, the screams and the blood overwhelmed him as he fought to stay conscious. His efforts were in vain as the darkness swallowed his world.

“Bella” he moaned as the lights went out.

“He’s awake.” The voice came form beside him.

Edward looked through the fog of his mind, the room became clearer after a few seconds. Gray walls, electronic equipment...this was a hospital. But how, he thought as the memory of the explosion rushed back to him.

“Where?” He tugged at the restraints holding him to the bed.

“You’re in the hospital” the nurse reassured him. “You’ll be fine, you’ve been through a bit of trauma.”

“Bella?”

“Your daughter? She’s fine, just a few scrapes. Your wife is with her now.”

“But what happened?”

The detective standing at the foot of the bed chimed in “we were hoping you could tell us.”

“A bomb, I think. Those damned thugs....”

“Yes, it was a bomb, we know that. It was in a car parked in the crowd; in fact what we really want to know is how it got into your car.”

“My car?”

“That’s what they tell me, you are the owner listed on the registration of the car that blew up.”

“But how?” Edward’s mind raced, images from the protest rushed through his head. He remembered the last time these thugs had killed people, it was a middle school. They had sent a child inside somehow carrying the explosive.

“Oh my God,” he shouted, “the lunch box...the bomb was in the lunch box! I told her, I told my wife...you can never trust these thugs, these killers...this damned teachers union.”